Scripture In This Episode:

Romans 12:15 – “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”

Philippians 4:4-7 – “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

1 Thessalonians 4:13 – “But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.”

Isaiah 26:3 – “You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You Because he trusts in You.”

Romans 12:1 – “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”

Psalm 86:15 – “But You, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious,
Longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth.”

Psalm 34:18 – “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart,
And saves such as have a contrite spirit.”

James 1:2 – “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.”

Ecclesiastes 7:1-4 – “A good name is better than precious ointment, And the day of death than the day of one’s birth; Better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, For that is the end of all men; And the living will take it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, For by a sad countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, But the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.”

 

Book Recommendations for Miscarriage:

• “Grieving the Child I Never Knew” by Kathe Wunnenberg https://amzn.to/2HQvxAG
• “Pain Redeemed” by Natasha Metzler https://amzn.to/37Xg8td
• “The Problem of Pain” by C.S. Lewis https://amzn.to/3905jrq
• “Safe in the Arms of God” by John MacArthur https://amzn.to/2STTRIk
• “I Will Carry You” by Angie Smith https://amzn.to/38UIzJq
• “Suffering Is Never for Nothing” by Elizabeth Elliot https://amzn.to/2HU8kO5

Angie teaches which Oils to use during Pregnancy Loss. If you are interested in learning more about joining Angie’s Courageous Mom Essentials Young Living Team and learning from her how to incorporate clean toxin-free products into your lifestyle and how to use oils with your family. Find out more here: http://courageousmom.com/oils

 

 

Full Transcript

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show to equip parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world. Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom. And I’m Isaac from Resolute Man. We’ve been married 20 years and I’ve seen the fruit in raising our eight kids biblically based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from the faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the podcast.

Isaac and Angie here. We’re so glad to see you guys again.

Yeah, absolutely. One of our favorite things to do, although it is about 11:00pm, isn’t it?

Oh, yeah. You guys we are shooting this podcast pretty late because as you know, we have many children and life goes on. And this is a good time to do it because it’s quiet right now. We are actually talking about a really sensitive topic here. And we didn’t want to re upset our children either by talking about the things we’re going to talk about again, because we’ve already discussed this with them.

Yeah. Unfortunately, most of you know, Angie just recently had a miscarriage. So that was tough. But there’s always a lot to learn.

There really is. And God is always faithful. And he was very present in my time of need. And the way that the body just surrounded me and, you know, and you guys were part of that.

I mean, the prayers, the messages that both I received, I received the emails and the texts, all of it just really, really overwhelming, actually. And cool to see how the body of Christ around the world kind of came together.

Yeah. People probably want to know, how old are you Angie?

I’m forty. How old are you, Isaac?

44 I still have four years on you.

That’s right. Yeah. So I’m considered where they call geriatric age or advanced maternal age, elderly, maternal. Those are real terms that I have been called before.

So what are the things people are gonna get out of this episode?

Well, if you have ever had a miscarriage, I would hope that this would be encouraging to you. We’re gonna share probably eight or nine different passages of scripture. So, of course, there’s always biblical encouragement in this. But we’re gonna share our story of miscarriage that we just walked through in the last couple weeks. What we decided to name our baby.

So maybe some people have gone through miscarriage and they haven’t had full closure yet with their baby or maybe it’s something they haven’t healed from. And so I would hope that just by sharing what we’re going to share today, maybe they would be motivated to pursue real healing from that trauma.

Also, if anyone has ever known anybody who’s had a miscarriage, I think it could be really helpful just to be able to hear from somebody who’s gone through it, maybe get some tips on how to comfort people who’ve gone through it.

Isn’t it true? A lot of times people become inward about their miscarriage versus sharing a lot about it?

Oh, for sure. I mean, it’s a very intimate thing, isn’t it? I mean, it’s just very intimate. I don’t. This honestly, this is not me. I can’t take credit for any of that. It really is just the vision that God has given me to just want to glorify him, you know, in all things.

So we’ll dive into it. But just as a reminder, we put on episode every week, we haven’t stopped for over a year now, every single week, no matter what.

And the purpose is to impact one million families and their legacies. And that is a way we can help impact the kingdom of God. So one of the ways to do that is give five stars on i-Tunes. by just tapping. It’s that simple. Written reviews are amazing. We read every one. Often we even share them. And when we see you share a post on social media where the podcast, we are so encouraging. But we also know that you’re raising your hand up and saying, I’m a courageous parent too and I believe in this movement and I want to help it. So we really appreciate that. By the way, all the notes are at CourageousParenting.com video of the episode Scripture’s and resources we mention, including signing up for the date night one sheet and the free courageous parenting workshop, which people are loving. so lets dive in.

Yeah. So I would also say that, you know, if you’re also going i havent had a miscarriage or maybe I know a couple people.

We’re also gonna talk a little bit about advice for someone who’s going through a miscarriage, some tips on that and then how to let your kids or help your kids to grieve. Because that’s something that’s not really talked about very often. We’re just gonna touch on that one. We may have to do a whole podcast on that because this could take a long time if we were to get into all those topics. So I first wanted to just say.

A lot of people have asked me how far along I was. Oh, yeah. And we were about well, when the miscarriage happened, we were eight weeks along. And so we had announced the pregnancy two weeks before.

Yeah. And so some people were probably wondering, you know, why announce it so soon? Like right away, like that versus wait. Make sure you know everything’s going well before you announce it.

Yeah. You always like to ask me the hard questions. Actually, no. I mean, I’ve we’ve talked about this. We’ve I’ve I wrote an actual blog post on this topic many years ago, back when we had Solomon and he’s now four and a half. Part of it is that I have learned because of having h.g and being very sick with morning sickness that I need prayer. I have just been humbled a lot in my mothering and in the last 20 years. And I will be honest. It’s a dying unto myself anytime I’m willing to receive another baby. Kids are a blessing. They really are. But getting to the place of having a child for me is not as easy as it is for other people. And so I have to die to myself before. And being willing to receive the gift, which a lot of people don’t experience the need for that. For example, I’m like sometimes even I have they’ve had times where I’ve been crying on the floor of the shower, asking God, Lord, if it’s your will that we have another baby 

I just pray that you would help me not to be sick. This one time I’m giving you my body as a vessel. Would you please bless me? Right.

And I have asked humbly for prayers from sisters in Christ, from the body. And so when we find out we are pregnant, I ask. I tell people because I need prayer. Yeah, right. And it wasn’t until our eighth pregnancy that when we lost Selah three years ago that I was even more under the conviction and opinion. I mean, this is an opinion this isn’t a biblical like perspective, although I do think that it’s good to be transparent with one another and to want to be living in a way where people are praying for you and your needs. That part is biblical. But when we lost Selah, I was really thankful that we had all of those people to walk through that with us and to be praying for us and lifting us up because we needed it. Yeah, we did. You know, and so I think that there’s an element of when people hold back and then they lose a baby and no one knows that isolation that occurs. I don’t think that that’s biblical. Right, that unknowing that. And it doesn’t allow. OK. So this is the part where I do believe firmly that biblically it does not allow the body to actually practice what God has commanded the body to do, which is to weep with those who weep in rejoice with those who rejoice. And if we truly believe the babies are a blessing, then we should be able to announce it in the body of Christ should rejoice with us, believing that the baby’s a blessing. And if we lose a baby because the baby dies, then they should be obeying scripture to weep with those who weep. And so we hold it back. We actually prevent the church from being able to be obedient to God in either way.

And your kids, if you don’t let your kids know they’re not experiencing God with you. We don’t just experience God when He comes through with huge blessings. We also experience God in the suffering. And sometimes a lot of times it’s good to include your kids in that. So that they experientially understand the full measure of God.

That’s right. And I think that if more people were willing to open up their lives in that way, there might be less kids growing up and then having wavering faith. Right. Because they understand the hard things more than most, you know. But you know that the rejoicing with those who rejoice. We’ve been with those who weep. That’s Romans 12:15. If you want to look it up, that’s just kind of been the theme verse. That has been something that’s been on my heart since I wrote Redeeming Childbirth. I wrote about that regarding this concept of rejoicing with moms when they have an awesome godly experience in birth versus being jealous or competitive that you didn’t do it that way. Right. And it’s the same thing with when you lose a baby being able to weep with those who weep rather than, oh, that makes me uncomfortable. I’m going to I’m going to run from that. Right. Yeah. And so there is a call for all Christians to obey that scripture. And I would just maybe even ask you if here’s here’s an exhortation. Ask yourself, “is it easier for me to rejoice with other people or is it easier for me to weep with people” and then ask yourself why? And because reality is we’re supposed be good at both. We’re supposed to do both. So there you go.

Now, I preached on Philippians 4:6-7. Actually, I read the whole chapter of Philippians 4. And that was just prior to that first ultrasound visit.

I believe that was the week after we announced and God is so good because He tees up the scripture and messages we need in perfect timing, doesn’t He?

Really? Yeah.

And so that became kind of Philippians 4 became the key verse for you, right. You want share with us?

Yeah. So Philippians, for those of you who aren’t aware, this is what it says in verse 4. It says Rejoice in the Lord always again.

I say rejoice. And then if you skip to verse 6, it says, Do not be anxious about anything.

So and I had shared I had shared in the podcast where we actually made the announcement for our baby. This was actually a scripture verse that we used in that podcast. Funny because I was anxious about potentially losing baby and I shared that in that. If you want to hear about that part of the story, you can go back. That’s I think it’s labeled we’re making a big announcement or something like that. Right. And obedience to God. And so in that that journey, I I was I was anxious. I’ll be honest. And this scripture was really ministering to me. It says Button everything by prayer and supplication. With Thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God. Peace of God. So a lot of times people actually say the peace, which surpasses all understanding. And I’ve even quoted it that way before because it is.

But it’s the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

So that’s chapter four versus four through seven. And then it continues on to it’s finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable.

You know, it’s a really encouraging passage of scripture. And I had been working on memorizing that. And I I just was meditating on on Thanksgiving and being thankful for things and looking for the things to be thankful for. And. And you led me on that, too, even when we were in the ultrasound room, because the doctor wasn’t very hopeful. Mm hmm. And you said, well, there’s hope because there’s a heartbeat. Yeah. And so in that moment, it was like, yeah. Okay. Be thankful for the heartbeat. Just be thankful for the heartbeat. Because when we when we went in, we didn’t have any suspicion of anything being off you guys. Everything seemed to be normal. And we went in for our first ultrasound and practically the doctor was super skeptical and kind of nagative. I think probably because of my age, right? Isaac Yeah, I think so. Yeah. They see a lot of challenge. Yeah. And right away I was like, well do you want to get this over with? And we will either have the good news or the bad news? It was just very cynical. Like what? And I looked at the ultrasound. And of course, for a mom who’s had 10 pregnancies, I know when an ultrasound looks good and when it doesn’t look good. And this was the first time I’d ever seen an ultrasound like this, because we saw the gestation sac with the yolk sac not on the inside. The heartbeat was on the outside of the gestation sac, which turns to the amniotic. And she was pointing out the heartbeat and how it looked different. And it just didn’t look right. And I could have become anxious and fearful. But right away, I just wanted to know what was going on, what to expect, and was thankful for that heartbeat. And she didn’t really give us a lot of information, but tried to kind of backpedal as soon as Isaac said, well, there’s hope, there’s a heartbeat. And she said, okay, well, let’s make an appointment for next week for another ultrasound and see what happens.

And so many people joined us in prayer right there. We were hopeful. And that next doctor visit came around.

And yeah, it was hard. I would say that when we got to that next doctor’s appointment, well, first to backup during that week I got the flu, which was insane.

no one else in the family got it but our whole church did. It  was so strange. And that never happens. first of all. I hardly ever get sick. Secondly, sickness doesn’t happen and then not hit everybody in a family a family of 10. And so I got really sick. And I remember when I was sick and I was vomiting just insanely, I thought, there’s no way the baby’s going to make it through this. I just kind of like was already starting to prepare my heart for that, starting to kind of grieve a little bit and was very prayerful.

But I focused on this passage of scripture and tried to take my thoughts captive and preach to myself the truth. And I shared that with a lot of people on our Instagram. Right. So on that courage, mom, Instagram, I shared the Bible verses I was meditating on stories and all those things. But this is the thing. When I look at this scripture, it says but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.

That to me was like, it’s okay for me to be requesting of God and praying to him to save the baby. Mm hmm. And so that was what we were praying for. We’re praying for a miracle. We’re praying for the yolk sac to move to the gestational sac. Daily with the kids. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, did guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus because I was able to go on throughout that week and it was fine, really. Like it was a very odd peace, actually. I mean, not odd. It was God’s peace. But then we got to the next doctor’s appointment and they showed us that my body had already started the process. They called it fading. Right. And so there was no heartbeat. And just about 10 minutes before the doctor even came in to do the ultrasound, I had this massive migraine headache hit me. I looked at Isaac and I said, my hormones are crashing and I know this is not going to be good and we need to brace ourselves. And for sure, we got the bad news right. The baby had died. And then we shift to the what can we expect physically? Because if you guys don’t know my story from previous, before we lost our first baby, I had hemorrhaged with two births, one pretty severely.

Our sixth child was a really severe hemorrhage where I was in and out of consciousness and great, amazing birth. An hour a couple hours later, I I lost a lot of blood, too much blood. And thank goodness I was able to be nursed back to health. Naturally, that was awesome. But I’ve had a lot of close calls. And then when we lost Selah, I lost 67 percent of my blood had to have emergency surgery and two blood transfusions and was even closer to death. You know, after nine hours of hemorrhaging, it was super, super close. Yeah. And so I shared the story more in depth on my blog. You can go look it up at courageousmom.com and just click on the miscarriage tab. But after having walked through those kinds of things, you become high risk automatically, especially when you’re older and you’ve had those experiences. But also for us, we like we go, okay. We’re not gonna have fear, but we need to be wise. We need set a plan. And the doctor started trying to give us some ideas of the plan. And it felt much more safe in that regard. And I experienced a few things that I wasn’t anticipating.

Yeah, well, we had the doctor’s visit, too, and then he dropped me off the airport. I had a trip that was. There was no way not to do this trip.

And so, yeah, I had to

fly out and do that. And unfortunately, when I was gone. You started?

Yes. So the miscarriage started pretty much. I mean, when the headaches started, I started bleeding more on Tuesday. And you were out of town till Wednesday night. And our church body was just amazing. they were really there for me. Available, helpful and wanting to care for the kids. Yeah. I was just gonna get to that. So. Our daughter Megan’s fifteen and she slept in our room while Isaac was gone. In case there is an emergency in the middle of the night. I mean she has just such a precious heart. You guys. She loves babies. I mean I’m super close to her. We have a really close relationship and I have a close relationship with both of our daughters. But our oldest daughter was at college, which was really hard for both her and I for all of us through this. And it was a different experience this time all around. So Megan. Before Isaac left, was up crying for that whole week before we started the grieving process, before I actually lost the baby and was really, really hard for her and cried into the night, lay in our arms. Right. And then when Isaac was gone, she and I would watch movies to try to, you know, kill the time and spend time together. And one night we were watching a superhero movie and I’m watching these superheroes go running towards danger and they’re running towards pain and suffering and all that thing.

And what hit me was that that is what Christians are supposed to do. Well, first it hit me like as an elder’s wife, like that is what I’m supposed to do. Right. And that’s what leaders should be doing. But then it hit me. I’m like, no, that’s what all Christians should do. We should all run towards those who are suffering in a not away from them. And that that’s what God did. Yeah, that’s what Jesus did when he was in our ministry.

And if you don’t know what to say, just rely on the Holy Spirit to guide you and be there.

That’s right. You don’t always have to say something. You know, that’s the thing is that God sometimes just wants people to sit and listen. And so Megan and I talked about that concept in depth and we went through scripture. we had a really good time talking about that. And so there are already lessons happening, is my point. Right. So as we’re preparing for this and then that night, I’ll just share briefly that. And this, you know, im trying not to make it graphic. But I lost a clot. And when I saw that I was okay, I was like emotionally fine in my mind and in my spirit. And I took a picture of it because I knew I needed to keep track because of my previous haemorrhages, went to wash my hands, and immediately my body started going into shock. And I had never experienced anything like that before because in my mind im like “get self-control”. What is going on? And I told Megan, I am freezing like I am really cold. And I got into the bed, put the covers on, and I start my teeth started chattering, my body started shaking and I could not stop. And her instincts immediately kicked in. She grabbed all the blankets, put them on top of me, grabbed a stress away oil and rubbed it on my neck and had me smelling it. And then she put her body weight on me and held me and started praying.

And within thirty five seconds, it stopped. Wow. And she was steady. She was not traumatized. She was not affected by it. And then she came and she sat down and we talked about it a little bit. We prayed together. And then we finished our movie that we had been watching right where we talked about suffering. And I. But what hit me is I’ve been looking back on that and going, OK. So I know that I processed my previous traumatic experience with the first miscarriage for sure. I wrote a ton about it. I shared about it all. Like there’s not. There was nothing left to do. We had a memorial service. We named the baby. There’s nothing left to do. Right. But yeah, I do think that there was an element of when my eyes saw the clot. There was some kind of trauma or scarring in my subconscious that kicked in and my body reacted. And there was no I couldn’t have control of it. Right. And so I do think that there is an element there where God still has healing to do in me. And so that’s why I’m sharing this with you guys, because if you don’t if I hadn’t done the work I had done, I can’t imagine what the reaction could have been this time.

Yeah, a lot of times it’s just not talked about. Couples don’t talk about it. And then it just long term hurts.

Yeah. And and I just think of the spiritual growth that would have been missed out on because during our first miscarriages when God was showing me and I was writing about giving thanks in the midst of grieving and weeping while we worship and. And it’s okay to grieve your baby because of First Thessalonians 4:13, which we will read next. And and that there were just so many huge lessons. And so having gone through that had actually prepared us for this trial, which is kind of like what we shared in a different podcast about the growth cycle. Right. And how when you walk through something, if you engage in it and you embrace it and you walk to God and you search scripture and you’re going after him, He grows you.

So you’re ready for the next potential trial that could come.

Yeah, amen. And then you had some amazing women come from church. Yeah. And help you.

Right. So Tuesday I just lost that one clot. We slept. And then Wednesday was the next day. And well, it wasn’t just the people in our church like that first night after I dropped you off, a dear friend, Lisa Jacobson. She was our elders wife from our previous home church. She called me up and said, I am taking you out to get you some dinner and we’re going to go out. And that was exactly what I needed. And so it wasn’t just the women in our church. It was women in our community that really reached out. I had Veronica Partridge was texting me prayers and checking on me and calling Megan, texting Megan, making sure I was OK. And, you know, and then Jen and Stacy, they I invited them to come and be with us on Wednesday night. Well, when the miscarriage started, because you weren’t home yet.

I was trying to get home. Yes, enroute. But it was going to take several long.

Right. And that night, I was actually supposed to lead a women’s meeting.

And I had felt like God was saying, you know, we need to talk about the language of empathy and these different things. Right. So I had this like study prepared. And it was interesting because the ladies met together, all of them, and they prayed for me like our body prayed for me. And they worked talked about how they have empathized with people, how they’ve dealt with loss and everything. Whatever it was, and had some really deep discussion and I guess and prayer time. And then they came. Jen and Stacy came to be with me and they stayed with Megan and me in my room and Austin. You know, of course, he was home in case there was an emergency as well. And so I just felt the love I felt care because they weren’t with their families. They were with me. And we the they came and I started bawling because, you know, it just was really a loving gesture that they were there with me in a really hard time. And they didn’t say anything. They just hugged me, kissed my four head and sat with me. And we had the worship while weeping playlist going, which we had been listening to for two weeks straight already, which is free. It’s my Spotify playlist. You can find that on courageous mom.

They all prayed that everything would stop so that I could be home, right?

And it did. It did. And that was the crazy part, is that that was it was really interesting because here I was like miscarrying the baby.

And it was like three hours straight. And they arrived and I’m still going to the bathroom and we’re worshipping. We have worse music playing. We’re laughing together, crying together, you know, all the things. And all the sudden at a nowhere., my body just stops. It’s like it obeyed God’s command to stop. And it just stopped. And then you got home two hours later. Yeah. And so this is the thing is that I wasn’t sure if it was over or not because that did not seem like a miscarriage to me, not compared to what we experienced with Selah. And it’s interesting because I’ve been at other women’s miscarriages serving them as a dula. All right. And even what I experienced this time was not like what they experienced either. And so and it’s just so what I have come to the conclusion through experience of serving others and walking through two different experiences is just like I I’ve written about this with birth. No pregnancy and birth is the same. Well, guess what? No miscarriage is the same. It’s just something no one talks about. Yes. And I think that a lot of people who go through a traumatic experience think that if they have a miscarriage, it can it’s gonna be the same. And I just have to say, it’s not necessarily going be that way.

It’s not a.. Take a moment. We’re going to go into the lessons learned in the second. But I just want to take a real quick moment and invite you if you haven’t joined us yet into the courageous parenting mentor program, the six week self-paced program with live interaction with us, even text messaging with us and being part of the community with all the other courageous parents that have been through the program. We’re currently going through the program with you. We would love to have you. We’d talk. There’s the six sessions are titled Theology, 37 Scriptures and then the heart so important. And then you got purity in discipline, 10 steps to have local discipline, discipline. Then you get discipleship and then you get equipping and that courage lesson. So it’s really, really powerful. Praise God. God is doing amazing things with it. It’s also one of the key things that helps support our ministry so that we can keep doing podcasts. So if you’re interested in that, there’s now even payment plans on the site and opportunities for small groups and churches and people to lead small groups and better pricing for small groups. So you go to CourageousParenting.com and check that out. But let’s talk about the lessons learned.

Yeah. So I would say, like I was mentioning before, that still it’s it’s always. A lesson. It’s like preaching to yourself and practicing and choosing. You have to make a choice to walk in what you know is right. Even if you know it already. Right. And so worshipping while we weeping was something that I desired to do to bring glory to God and to also because I personally know that when your eyes are kept on the Lord, then it’s hard to focus on what you’re going through. And it’s just it’s actually God’s way of blessing us.

And in fact, there’s a scripture in my I mentioned it in redeeming childbirth in my book is you keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. That’s Isaiah 26:3.

I actually it was interesting because I started reading through redeeming childbirth. I was going through it with a couple of moms that were pregnant at our church, a couple of them are reading it and I became pregnant again. So I started reading through this again because we want to also do another edition of it. And as reading through the worship aspect, which is worship is not about us, it’s all about God, it’s about adoring him. And you can read more about what that means in redeeming childbirth in that chapter. Ultrasound of worship and crowning him in worship.

But I when I went through my first miscarriage with Selah. I wanted to have the same heart posture that I had in birth because frankly, I don’t like the word miscarriage. It is a loss of a baby. You’re pregnant. So pregnancy losses one. It’s I think it’s a better terminology because it wasn’t something I did not carrying the baby. Right. You know, it’s like I didn’t drop my baby. Miscarriage is such a bad word for it, actually. Words are powerful. Yeah. And I. So when it comes to worshipping God in a time of weeping and keeping my eyes on him, I wanted to be birthing my baby even though it was prematurely because the baby had died in the same way that I had birthed my other babies.

Right. Because I want to.

I don’t want it to be me, I want my only memory of or some of my strongest memories of my children that I don’t get to have with me here on Earth to be this traumatic experience when I have this like beautiful experience with these other kids. And so one way of doing that is to be able to worship through miscarriage. And people might be listening, going, that is insane. Right, to worship through that. But I have to tell you guys that God’s word is true. And when you keep your mind state on him, he does pour perfect peace over you. Yeah. And.

You know, with Selah, we were worshipping the whole time that we were miscarrying. But God allowed me to walk through what I walked through in that trial. And a dear friend of ours who we go to church with now, Holy,had, said to me back then, Wow, God really trusts you with this trial. And I never thought of that before. And but my heart was always to bring him glory because my life’s not about me.

Your life’s not about you. We believe in the great commission. We believe in every ounce of God’s grace and that we are nobody’s actually in that regard.

Right. And so why? Why wouldn’t I think that way? Right. Yeah. And God in his goodness. This time, as I was worshipping him, God really had mercy on me because that experience that I had for those two hours was the majority of the miscarriage. And I did end up losing more tissue on the next Monday. And then it was over. But it was not the cramping and contractions and birthing experience that I had for those three hours before you got home on Wednesday night, which were much more peaceful. And so I look at that and I’m like, wow, God had mercy on me.

And there are a couple scriptures that I want to just share with you briefly. One is Romans 12:1. Which says, I appeal to you. Therefore, brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship, and to me, that’s what I was doing, is offering my body as a living sacrifice.

Right, to be able to have another baby come into the world. That was my spiritual worship, in a sense.

But God was presenting his mercy over me as I was doing that. And so I Isaac and I as we had been praying about what we were gonna name the baby. Yeah, we landed on Mercy. So we named the baby Mercy. And then there’s one other scripture that was well, there’s actually quite a few scriptures, but I don’t enough time to share them all here. But Psalm 86:15, But you, O Lord, are a God, merciful and gracious. Slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love and faithfulness.

And I definitely felt God’s mercy and graciousness over me in the miscarriage. And so it just seemed like the perfect name for the baby.

And so every time that we’ve walked through loss, there have been certain scriptures that we’ve kind of clung to. And as we’ve been studying mercy and scripture and reading more and more scriptures about it, it kind of helps us to feel like we’re learning about our baby that we don’t get to actually have here with us on Earth. One of the things that I was washing or reminding myself over and over again was Lord gird me with gladness and wanting to be glad, not wanting to be depressed. And I think that that was really helpful. But during the week when you were home, when we were waiting to find out, you read Ecclesiastes 7 to the kids.

And in there there’s a passage of scripture that says that it is better to be in the House of the morning than the house of the laughter.

Very counter-intuitive. God is right.

And then it goes on to say that a sad countenance makes a heart better.

And you went over and you preached through this whole chapter. This was the first 18 verses of Ecclesiastes 7 and went through it with the kids. It took us a couple of hours. It was so powerful for me to where I realized, okay, it’s good for me to say outloud. Gird me with gladness, right. But also it’s okay for me to have a sad countenance because then people will be praying for me. They will ask me what’s going on. I have an opportunity to be transparent and be encouraged, you know, and real fellowship can happen. But if somebody is being fake and they don’t, they’re pretending. So they don’t look like they have a sad countenance. Is their heart actually made better even if they’re they can be going through something horrible and putting a mask on? Yeah, their hearts are going to be made better. Right. And so there was just there was a lot of that kind of conversation.

You’re like, wow, you preach for two hours. To just your family.

Yeah. Yeah.

We had no church that particular Sunday because everybody was everybody was sick. And so. Yeah. I led the family in that. But you know, what’s interesting is that the Holy Spirit can totally work through you if you have faith. And so I didn’t prepare anything to talk to my family. Yeah, that scripture came to me and I just started going through it in the spirit led. So I just thought that might be edifying. Sometimes you know how you know, I’m not used to preaching or doing these things. Well, are you trusting the Holy Spirit and are you doing it? And if you do it, it’ll get better and better. But also the spirit will help you. So, yeah, super, super cool to bathe your family in the word of God. What advice do you have for people? I know it’s important not to isolate and rush in to being busy and all these kinds of things. Yeah. What advice do you.

So for sure you don’t want to isolate yourself. A lot of women feel isolated without purposefully isolating themselves simply because they haven’t shared that they were pregnant and then all of sudden they found that they have loss. Right. But there is also that initial I think it’s a human reaction to to just withdraw and be to isolate really and to want to mourn alone and want to not feel like you’re a burden to other people or make other people feel uncomfortable or. But the Bible says in the word to carry one another’s burdens. Yeah. And we are actually stealing the blessing from our brothers and sisters in Christ if we’re not letting People in, so don’t isolate yourself.

Next thing would be to not rush into business. One of the things that I think women often struggle with. I know I do is that I will make myself busy so that I don’t have to actually deal with the grief that I’m going through. Like to kind of to go around it. Right. And so I would just encourage you to rest. And to not get busy. God and I have this interesting relationship. I feel like he knows well, obviously. He knows me better than myself. So I just feel like sometimes that’s why he allows me to go through such traumatic experiences where literally, like, he’s sitting me down and he’s saying, rest, you’re not capable physically of doing anything. And it’s been the best thing for me because it’s made me seek him out and get into the word. The third thing which kind of went with don’t isolate is be transparent because you could be with people and not be transparent, which can be isolating or lonely.

Like it’s kind of a paradox, right, to be with people all the time, but still feel lonely.

And if we feel that way, it’s because we’re not being real. That’s actually on us. It’s our fault if we’re with people and we still feel lonely, it’s because we are not being transparent. The fourth thing I would say is spend as much time in scripture, prayer and worship as possible because grief is disorienting. It is a peculiar thing to walk through and our culture does not allow people to grieve biblically. And so you gotta be in scripture to fight for yourself, to advocate really for yourself, to be able to grieve biblically. The next thing would be to be patient with yourself because there isn’t like a timeline of when you’re gonna be healed. Right. Like especially if you go through something like losing a child or losing a baby, you just.

You’re never going to forget? Right.

That doesn’t mean that life doesn’t go on. Yeah, it does. But healing looks different. So you be patient with yourself. And then the last two are very practical pieces of advice. Naming your baby is kind of a really special thing. Of cours, this isnt a must do but the Bible does say that God knows us before he created us in our mother’s womb. OK. Look up Psalm 139. And so if he knew us before he created us in our mother’s womb and you had a baby that was in your womb, then that means God knew them and he knew them by name. Actually, when you look at the scriptures. And so your baby has a name. What is it? Seek the Lord for what your baby’s name should be and then have a memorial of some kind.

We had a memorial for Selah where we went on an RV trip with all kids and we did worship on the beach and shared a little scripture with some quiet. You gave a rose to each of the kids that they could either throw the whole rose in the ocean or they could take the petals off and just pray. And it was that you let them all kind of span out and they had quiet time. I remember seeing Austin standing in the ocean and holding his guitar, singing worship music because he led worship on the sand. I’d given him a couple of songs to practice and bring in. And then you took the kids back to the RV and let me have a couple more hours on beach by myself. And we needed that as a family. We needed that closure together in an intimate way.

Talk about teaching your kids the value of life and to be pro-life and to to be patient with those who grieve

And that it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to weep. It’s okay. And it’s good to worship God in the midst of hard times and to be thankful to look for those things. And they learned all the hard things that that we didn’t even learn till we were older, you know, at a young age.

And so I would say that those are my top like things that are must dos if you need help. There’s another website called Stillbirthday.com highly recommended. They have a lot of great resources. I also have some books. My favorite one is called Grieving the Child I Never Knew by Kathy Wunnenberg. pain redeemed by Natasha Metzler is for people who struggle with infertility. Then there’s the problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis Safe in the Arms of God by John MacArthur and I Will Carry You by Angie Smith.

So again, all those will be at CourageousParenting.com hit podcasts and you can see the list.

Yeah. So I would say, you know, to wrap up, I would I would say that we definitely experienced some new lessons this time. But I think that what I also saw that was super encouraging was that God really had grown all of us.

Even our family, we did grieve. We had to deal with fears that we didn’t really know were there again, like the kids. And you were really scared for me. Yeah. Right. I’m fearful that maybe I would bleed out again and potentially die. And so we had to face those fears.

We had to deal with them, which is a healthy thing to deal with. Hard, but good. Right. And I had to deal with that. Right. And so the Lord is near to those who are brokenhearted. That’s Psalm 34:18. And we definitely experienced that. But through this all I just wanted to just share with you guys, like the thing that I’ve been wanting to say the most, which is we must never glorify the suffering, but only the lamb who was slain.

And that is my heart. That’s why I want to keep sharing scripture. Right. Like it’s okay if you’re grieving to ask God to take the cup from you. Jesus did that in the garden of Gethsemane.

What do you mean by glorifying the suffering?

By focusing so much on it and maybe even praising it instead of giving worship to God right. And going, oh, look at what I walked through. Right. And focusing so much on that, like God is close to those who are brokenhearted. There is. It’s better to be in the house of the morning than those in the house of laughter. Right. There are so many scriptures. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall see God. And there there’s so many encouraging passages of scripture.

And yet, if you don’t walk through suffering, you can definitely miss out on a lot.

It’s hard to relate and empathize with people at first. But I do believe that there’s a lie that the enemy tries to divide or not divide, but prevent people from actually being in close, intimate biblical friendship, which the lie is, if I’ve gone through exactly what that person’s gone through, then I can’t possibly relate and I can’t possibly minister to them. And that’s a lie from the enemy, because the reality is you don’t need to relate. You don’t need to say anything. The Bible says weep with those who weep. Does it say exhort them, correct them, have the right passage of scripture to preach at them? Share your experience with them. Know when someone is going through suffering, they just want someone to love them as Jesus would love them. And what would Jesus do? He prayed for people, he walked with people, he was long suffering with people. And that’s what we’re called to be for one another.

And I really think that there’s this element of. You know, where sometimes we can accidentally bring too much attention to the suffering when really what we’re supposed to be doing is glorifying God. And so. You know, James 1:2 says count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and less steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. And then says If any of you lacks wisdom, Let him ask God who gives generously to all without approach, and it will be given to him. And I think if you’re struggling with knowing how to say something, you don’t have wisdom in how to help somebody. This is go God. He gives generously. And that we have. We do need accountant joy when we meet trials because we can trust that God is going to work a good fruitiness.

And so if you have gone through any struggling grief, miscarriage or loss. I would love to hear from you. I’d love to.

Just connect on social media and you can find out that we have a lot of blog posts written on courageousmom.com. We have a whole list of worship songs that are to lead your heart in times when you can’t lead your heart right. To lead your heart to God. Focus on him and to be thankful to God because he is good always. He doesn’t change. And thank you guys for being there with us.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. And thanks for joining us in this episode. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode.

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